 Thank you for joining us today. It's Jessica here with Cointelegraph and today I'm joined by Hyun Lee, founder of Crescent. Hyun has a background in mathematics with over 10 years of experience in risk management, traditional finance and DeFi, market making and derivatives training. Besides Crescent, he also managed such blockchain projects like Validator and R&D Team, B Harvest, leading research and development on Cosmos SDK and DeFi. Hello, Hyun, and welcome to Cointelegraph Live. How are you today? Hello, thank you for inviting. Great today. Absolutely, awesome. Well, we're glad to have you here. And today we'll talk about the Crescent Network in detail about its decentralized exchange that works on an innovative hybrid model and the current DeFi landscape within the Cosmos ecosystem. I'm really excited to be here with Hyun and learn more about the Crescent Network. But first, here's a quick video introducing the Crescent Network. Before we get started, I just want to remind our audience to please send us your questions in the chat and make sure to like the video and subscribe to the channel. Our AMA session today is structured a little bit different. Today, we will frame our AMA questions in the form of a quiz with our guest, Hyun choosing at random any theme and question. Hyun, you can skip any question from the board if you'd like. As always, this AMA will be interactive. Audience, please make sure to share your questions in the chat and these will be randomly added to our board for Hyun to select from the category questions from the audience. So let's begin. Hyun, which theme and question would you like to start with? So let's start with Crescent Story question number one. Perfect. Hyun, what is the Crescent Network and what sets it apart from other decentralized exchanges? Yes. So there are lots of different advantages of decentralized exchange compared to centralized exchange. So in the future, there will be a very new norm for any trading assets to be traded on decentralized exchange and see centralized exchange. And within decentralized exchange, we have specific characteristics which will be, first of all, a hybrid decks. So all the book was like, has been a great tool for traders to use and it has a lot of advantage, but most of all it provides like maximum freedom for traders to trade what they want and express their order and trading intention. So older book is a very good functionality and AMM is created from blockchain context, which has another advantages. So there's a strong reason for us to have both of them because it works better in different situations. So we take both advantage within different situations. So we provide both functionality at the same time. So Market Maker and liquidity provider will provide liquidity at the same time so that they can support each other. And the other functionality will be concentrated liquidity which will also maximize capital efficiency for liquidity provider and also manage LP feature will be launched soon so that it can be providing user for passive LP investment experience. Wonderful. Well, that's very informative. And why is concentrated liquidity so important? Yeah, because basic liquidity will provide liquidity from price zero to infinity. And that's very not capital efficient because most of the price for each trading pair will be volatile within certain price range. And especially for a very stable pair with very similar value then the price range will be very narrow. So it will be better for users to choose their own range of price so that they can provide more concentrated liquidity so that they can use this liquidity provider without less capital needed so that they can achieve this capital efficiency for them. Wow, amazing. Well, let's keep it moving. What's the next category, Young? So maybe next will be a little bit more personal with question number one. Okay, let's go a little bit more personal question one. What inspired you to get into finance and then web three? Yeah, so I have been working for 10 years within Treadfy industry as market maker, arbitrator and risk management especially dealing with derivatives. So I was exposed to all these traditional finance industry power game, high frequency trading, institutional advantages and so on. So I felt a lot of like having a tilted ground for trading experience. So this unfairness and like hardness of this power game within financial institution did not allow us to create a very innovative and fair marketplace for ordinary users. So I now believe that the blockchain technology allows a trustless and transparent environment for financial services without relying on organizations or like big institution service providers so that we can build this independent and fair marketplace. So also cryptocurrency tokenomics allow completely new approach on building user community and its ecosystem without traditional business approach which is very conservative. So it is another way for us to create very unique and self-motivated marketplace and ecosystem also like with very enthusiastic community within. So I was really fascinated by this brilliant minds in blockchain industry to disrupt and innovate current financial service area. So I decided to like spend my less of my life building this stuff. Amazing. And for those who are in traditional finance who are kind of intrigued by this new decentralized financial industry that we're basically building that you're building, what recommendations would you have as far as like the transition? Did you find the transition easy? Is it something that's doable? I know there's a lot of hesitation in the world and so like what would be your word advice to those individuals who are potentially in the same shoe you were in years ago where you were working in a traditional financial sector and then very intrigued by this new world of web three that we're building. Yeah, so in web three everything is different. It's not only about technology but also all this like different ecosystem, different game theory, different participants. So make sure that most of your assumption will be different in web three. And there are lots of also risk around just using new DeFi and web three applications. So make sure that you have all this studied and researched each application you are using and please be safe using this. And I hope there should be like more stable environment for web three and DeFi ecosystem so that users can trust better and they can use the service without risk happening from each like bug or exploitation, rock pool. These are really horrible thing in DeFi and I believe that there will be better infrastructure and ecosystem where this can be prevented strongly. So that is my advice. Amazing and hopefully that's what you're working on, correct? So let's go on to our question board and select our next category. So next one, another question story, question three. Okay, another question story, question three. Current challenges on DeX and DeFi in general and how Crescent helps in overcoming those challenges. So what are the current challenges that you're facing and how are you overcoming them? Yeah, so user experience is much better in centralized exchange than decentralized exchange because of this context within blockchain technology. Still the blockchain technology is very early. It's very in baby phase. It should be developed improved over time very significantly over five to 10 years but still it's very early. So it's very slow and unstable. And also the experience, even though the underlying technology is web three, still the user experience locked in web two experience because every protocol is providing its own front end which is not integrated but scattered around independent protocols. And also there's not, because of this aggregation of experience is very hard in web two kind of front end experience. Passive investment tools are lacking right now. So this is really difficult for users to reach out because every independent protocols are providing independent utilities. So I think there should be a future where the technology will be improved over time for better UX and also there should be like very integrated utility and UI for users so that you don't need to like visit like tens of different websites for each protocol. Hyeong, we know that the user experience is really important. Are there any things that like the user should be looking for when they're deciding on which exchanges to work with or to invest with and things like that? Do you have any recommendation for users who are trying to maximize their experience and portfolio exposure? So I believe that you should have like right strategy for how to invest your portfolio. So I believe there should be like two different ways like stay within like large cap and very safe choices but also you can adventure with very small cap and alpha project. But I believe that within this blockchain context statistically it's better for you to have portfolio diversified within more on small caps than big large cap because in high volatility context it gives better advantage to upside apart than having large cap and destroyed its capital. So I believe that if you can study well and choose the right projects then I think small cap diversification will be benefiting you. Amazing. Well, moving on, let's select from our next category. So next one will be maybe questions from the audience. Question number four. Okay, audience, let's go with question four. How does Crescent contribute to Cosmos as a public infrastructure? Yeah, we are strong believer of public goods in blockchain area. So we always believe that it should be working as public goods rather than like selfish each protocol pursuing its capital earning. So I believe that Crescent vision is lying on becoming public goods for Cosmos liquidity. So to achieve that our philosophy is first providing as many as choices we can for the users. So there are lots of new project coming into Cosmos and if we are selfish each other for Crescent development then we want to maybe like selectively choose some projects which will benefit Crescent itself. But I believe that the responsibility of DAX in Cosmos is to provide as many choice as we can for users. So we are very open to any kind of partnership with newcomers in Cosmos like without who are who's friend or not, especially if we're not related to Cosmos inner circle. So we believe that all these newcomers will be the future of Cosmos ecosystem. We want to introduce them all to you. And also we are building bootstrap feature for discovering new projects and ideas. So we want to become the center of center community of this rapidly expanding Cosmos ecosystem to discuss and discover new projects in Cosmos and also provide its investment opportunities. So that's how we become public goods for Cosmos to provide as many options as we can and becoming community center community for this discovery process. Can you share a bit more about like your values and how these values align with the Cosmo network and why you decided to build on Cosmos? Yeah, so Cosmos is all about decentralization and community. So I like very like this characteristic about people and not becoming too powerful for each participants but having like decentralized power within the ecosystem because decentralization is the core philosophy of blockchain itself. So I value this much because that is the reason why I invest my most of the years within blockchain on Cosmos because I believe in this philosophy. So I believe that in the far future, Cosmos will have much bigger ecosystem, very inclusive ecosystem for other blockchain to have its own chain, own in sovereignty and connection each other. So this will be the ultimate end game for blockchain. Wonderful, well, that sounds amazing. Moving on to our next category, let's put up the board. Okay. So maybe another Crescent story, question five. Another Crescent story, question five. Can you tell us more about the measures in place to prevent fraud and manipulation on your platform? Yeah, so as I shared before, our team's biggest concern is about fairness because it is not kept within traditional finance and we are here to fix that. So fairness is one of the most important value we are achieving right now. So one of the way for us to have this fairness within Crescent will be batch execution. So batch execution means all your orders within a block will be coming together in a blockchain and then this will not have any time prioritization. So every order we have from different users will be aggregated in a block and then these will be batched simultaneously at the same time so that no order will be prioritized over others. So this is a very unique functionality and it's not like Ethereum network or other contract-based blockchain or most of the Cosmos blockchain also. They're using sequential execution but batch execution is very unique way to have this for fairness. And also we are going to prevent validators block manipulation by publicly monitoring system for observing divergence of proposed blocks from each validator so that we can measure probability of manipulation. So validator business is more about reputation and they are at risk of reputation when they manipulate blocks because these malicious validators will not get enough delegation from user if they are believed to be a manipulator in the blockchain. So I believe that they have enough incentive to keep not manipulating and doing the fair validator responsibility. So we are going to provide this like statistics for public so that they can decide whether these validators are manipulating or not. So I believe in this kind of mechanism to have public knowing these statistics and decide by public. Well, thank you, Hyun. I know transparency in the blockchain crypto space is very important, especially in light of everything that we've seen this past year. So I know the community will welcome such transparencies from the Crescent network. Moving on, let's go back to our board to select the next question. So in simple terms, question three. Question three in simple terms. All right, Hyun, tell me more about your plans to develop Crescent network for the next couple years. Yeah, so we launched our mainnet April last year. So it has been a little bit less one year. So we have been developed different features and we are going to continue our innovation with different categories of improvement. So first of all, user-friendly UX. So we are developing multi-hop swap so that for any token pair, you can swap with just one click and one signature with maximum convenience. And also temporarily no signing feature for order book because when you use centralized exchange, there will be no signing. But in decentralized exchange, you need to sign every transaction you are sending. But because we are fully decentralized order book, when you place limit order every time you need to sign, but we are going to provide temporarily no signing feature for convenience. And also because of this web 2 experience from DeFi space locking users within Frontend UI, there should be better DEX aggregator in Cosmos ecosystem. So that users can find best DEX to swap at that time for given token pair so that they can get the cheapest liquidity in Cosmos. So I believe this will be another important roadmap for us. And also for scalability, Cosmos SDK is not really good at parallel computing but we are going to improve this so that we can maximum utilize parallel computing for maximum scalability so that we can prepare a mass adoption phase of next cycle of blockchain with millions of users coming. And also we want to improve Tenderman Core because Tenderman is steady, not very improving at its performance. For several years, even though other consensus algorithms are like quickly innovating. So we believe that our responsibility to improve Tenderman Core better so that it can have more lower latency and more TX capacity. And also a shorter block time and refactoring of liquidity module is a scalability issue. And also new features like managed LP, LP collateralized lending and Cosmos and adoption and interestingly, derivative market end of this year. And also for business development, we are very caring with growing community and more exposure and information towards community. So we are caring more about community so we'll be investing more research for this too. Amazing. Well, it sounds like the community can expect an enhancement of user experience. We'll see some scalability within the network as well as accelerated partnerships within the Cosmo ecosystem and as well potentially accelerated listing and incentivizing new tokens and so forth. Sounds like you have a lot planned and we're excited to see what happens as the year unfolds. But let's move on to our next question. So maybe another personal question, a little bit more personal with question four. Okay, a little bit more personal with question four. Ooh, this is exciting. Explain your tweet. So in this suite you said, I know that Web3 Finance is for innovations but it's very surprising that a lot of DeFi and crypto are designed with ignorance of the most basic traditional finance 101. DeFi is also finance and those shockingly lacking basic trade-fi common sense brings unbelievable catastrophe to the ecosystem. Can you explain a little bit more what you were referring to, what you're talking about? I know we've seen a lot in this past year so maybe dive more in depth into what this tweet actually meant for you. Yeah, so I really believe in this new technology and culture within blockchain ecosystem and all these smart people working for creating new functionality and innovation within the space but still in financial application layer even though innovation is very important there should be also a lot of things where risk management matters. So like most of the traditional financial institution they have like very heavy department with a lot of people caring about risk management for its institution and also for its users and it is really important for regulators to have that too for very reasonable reasons. But in this industry everything is about innovation and risk management is less emphasized within this ecosystem and all this risk is upon users. So there are like selfish developers and leaders who are not caring more about risk management for the users and this lacking of like basic experience knowledge and philosophy to care about its users it results in catastrophic events. So there are lots of defy accident within the space with very simple ignorance of knowledge or intention to protect users. So I was really very disappointed and like I said about the culture where these developers are not caring much about financial risk for the users. Yes, absolutely. And we saw what happens when the developer doesn't take the user into consideration this past year. Well, Hyeong, it looks like we have time for one final question. So let's go ahead and pick a question from the board. Another maybe a little bit more personal with question three. A little more personal with question three. The current problem of defy web three that bothers you the most and ways to solve it aside from the Crescent Network solutions. What are some of these problems and how do you think we could solve them? Yeah, so it is very difficult for us to like strongly suggest defy to be used by ordinary people without like context or knowledge within web three environment. This is, we can say that defy is hard. It's complex and not very secure at some point. And there are not many teams who can build a secure code base for users and they don't have enough willingness to do that too. So it needs a lot of testing and simulation before each software upgrade process and code should be well designed so that anyone can easily read and review. There are lots of conditions for the program to be used for mass people. So our team has put this value as priority for our development process for more than five years. And now it is our philosophy and our lifestyle now. So designing the viable ecosystem for defy community requires knowledge and experience and our team is composed of great thinkers with rich knowledge and experience from traditional finance and mathematics to design the right economic mechanism for defy. So I believe that these difficulties for users should be solved well so that users can come into defy and use it without any risk. So maybe it'll be nice for someone to create a modular defy framework maybe which provides necessary financial core functionalities and related ecosystem for defy developers to share its modules and infrastructure then everything will be much more optimized and secure and seamless. So maybe someone will build that. Absolutely. Well, if not, we look forward to seeing it built on the Crescent Network in the near future. Kyung, it's been an absolute pleasure having you here on the show today. We've learned so much about the Crescent Network, your philosophy and what you're doing to help improve the space. Before we sign off, I'm sure that the audience would like to know how they can get in touch with you and how they can reach out to the team if they have any questions. So in that, can you share what's the best way to get in touch with you or connect to your community so that our audience can continue to learn more about what's happening in the Crescent Network? Yeah, so if you visit Crescent.network, then you will see our homepage with different links. So we have like telegram channel, but most importantly, maybe Discord is most active within our ecosystem. So you can come here, say hello and do upload any question you have. Then we'll be very happy to answer and interact with you guys. So very welcome to Crescent Network. Perfect. Well, Kyung, it's been a real pleasure. I just wanna say thank you again for joining us today for the AMA and thank you for our audience for being interactive and sending along your questions. I just want to remind everyone to please subscribe to Cointelegraph's YouTube channel. We do AMAs like this quite frequently. Thank you again, Kyung and thanks to our audience. We'll see you next time. Yeah, thank you for the time and opportunity.